If Liverpool have a hard man in their ranks, it is Martin Skrtel. Famous for taking knocks that require a head bandage in order to return to the game, the thirty-year-old defender is no stranger to head trauma or in-match surgical staples. The man is a rock.
But like most hard men, Skrtel occasionally betrays a softer underbelly to the world. Though he may not regularly participate in Kop Kids interviews or get up to things on Instagram that have fans shouting "ADORBS!" from the rooftops, Skrtel's famous and completely unexpected heart tattoo on his lower back tells us he's a man of great sensitivity, one who feels all the feels just like the rest of us. The current source of his melancholy? Last season, of course.
"When you lose or have a bad season it’s an awful feeling," Skrtel said in an interview with Liverpool's official magazine. "You are sad and disappointed and you don’t really want to speak to anyone. I don’t kick a wall or shout but it stays with you for a long time.
"I always try to look at why we lost or why I didn’t perform well. I think you have to do that because you need to see why something happened. And I know the only place you can change it is out on the training field, so you have to work hard there to improve."
Channeling your sads into something tangible and productive is a healthy way of dealing with those feelings, and Skrtel seems confident that Liverpool should be able to identify where they went wrong last year and make improvements accordingly. In other words, when life gives you lemons, you pulverize those lemons into a pulpy mess that hopefully finishes in the Top Four next season.